Increased attention to drug abuse in the late 1980's led to large increases in funding for research at the NIDA. There was some expectation that new knowledge and improved technology would help shift the drug control focus away from law enforcement and toward treatment and prevention. NIDA and its primary research constituency of medical schools and universities responded with an important new emphasis on applied research focused on pressing social and medical problems. However, when public attention to drug abuse decreased in the mid-1990's, research sponsorship and activity reverted somewhat to its traditional concern with several areas of basic medical research relevant to but somewhat removed from the immediate needs of treatment and prevention programs. Advocates of demand side alternatives are left to wait for a medical breakthrough amidst a modest but steady stream of incremental research contributions to practice. Figures, tables, note, references